From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2017 17:03:33 -0700

OK, this is Cisco selling their equipment and services and pushing a
vision of the future, but it's still very instructive:

https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1853168

Predictions include total global internet users going from 3.8 to 4.6
billion, while more than half of the by-then 27 billion devices
connected to the internet will be "internet of things" rather than
human-directed technology like phones and laptops.  "With the rise of
connected applications such as health monitors, medicine dispensers,
and first-responder connectivity, the health vertical will be
fastest-growing industry segment (30 percent CAGR)."  Cars will come
in a close second.  Video will be the largest single consuming type of
traffic (account for 80% of the whole).  Lest those numbers make you
too dizzy, know that Distributed Denial of Service attacks will get
much larger and more powerful at the same time.

So even if I wouldn't swear to those numbers, they point in an
important direction where human beings are poor information
processors.  Really big numbers getting bigger faster are as hard for
us to handle as really small numbers are.  A thirty percent growth
rate doubles in three years.  It's easy for ordinary mortals to
shamble around assuming that the world is about as big and complex as
it's always been, or just a little bigger.  No, growth factors like
this change scale in important ways.  I say this while forgetting that
there are about twice as many Americans around as there were when I
got here and three times as many people on the planet.  Heck, there
are about twice as many people in my *city* as there were when I first
started visiting it regularly 25 years ago.

Jim O'Donnell
ASU